Page 27 of Over the Flames

He shook his head, rage contorting his handsome features into someone she didn’t recognize.

“You used me, Arden. You used me for access to this case, just like the reporter who used me and got a little girl killed in the process. You never intended to keep your end of the deal. You were going to get your story and run as fast as you could. The same way you ran from our marriage.” Defeat stole the anger from his voice—the betrayal—and the skin on the back of her neck burned. “Every one of you people are exactly the same, and I should’ve seen it before now. I should’ve followed my gut not to trust you. There’s nothing you care about more than getting your story, is there? Not even me.”

“I didn’t… I wasn’t…” Cold infused her veins. She didn’t know what to say, what to think. She couldn’t move or speak. Her mouth parted with a rebuttal, but subconsciously she understood there’d be no use. He’d made his mind up about her long before they’d started working this investigation together. He didn’t trust her, didn’t intend to fulfill his promise that he’d be there for her, and from his retreat to the front door she realized there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise. “Lawson, wait. I wasn’t doing it for me. Please, let me explain.”

“Why? You’ve made your choice pretty clear. We made a deal. You gave me your word none of this would make it into the media, and now I see you’re willing to put this entire case at risk.” Lawson wrapped his hand around the door handle. He leveled his chin parallel over his shoulder but refused to look at her. “Another agent will make contact to take over your protection detail.”

He closed the door behind him.

Arden collapsed onto one of the barstools, and a new wound shredded through her. She’d helped him with this investigation. She’d made a difference this time, and he’d still discarded her as easily as he had before their divorce. A sob built in her chest. It didn’t matter what he’d promised. It didn’t matter how she’d helped him be honest with her. She’d never be good enough for him.

A soft knock reached her ears, and it took everything inside of her to force one foot in the front of the other. Arden set one hand over her stomach, wiping her face with the other, and ripped open the front door. “Lawson, I don’t want to—”

Pain exploded from every nerve ending in her body. Falling back, Arden dislodged the stun gun pressing into her ribs and miraculously directed fifty-thousand volts of electricity into the wall beside her. The buzz of the device ticked in her ears. She struggled to flip onto her stomach, clawing for something she could use as a weapon. The shadow of her attacker spread over her through the white streaks in her vision. Her spine curled in on itself involuntarily with another jolt of the taser, and everything went black.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Arden had lied to him. She’d given him her word none of what they’d uncovered during this investigation would be available to the public, but the draft she’d been working on, the notes and audio files he’d found in plain sight on her laptop, had exposed her for exactly the kind of woman she was.

Pain set up residence behind his ribcage as Lawson strode across the parking lot toward his SUV. Wrenching open the driver’s side door, he tossed his damp suit jacket, slacks and shirt into the front passenger seat and slammed the door behind him. He clung to the steering wheel harder than necessary, his busted knuckles protesting the pain. His lungs pressurized the longer he stared out over the parking lot outside her building.

She was off the case. It didn’t matter that Arden had identified the victims’ handwriting on physical drafts in Phil Anderson’s basement and discovered the connection between all three victims. It didn’t matter she’d located the scene where the first victim had been killed, and it didn’t matter that she’d kept Brent Hayward—the Arsonist—from escaping FBI custody. He’d taken the risk of including her in the investigation—against his better judgement—and now he had to be the one to clean up her mess. He’d meant what he’d said. She’d put the entire case at risk. Every piece of evidence she’d come into contact with, every lead she’d given could be used against the prosecution if this case made it to trial.

Lawson patted his jeans pockets and set his head back against the headrest. Determined to put as much space between them as fast as possible, he’d managed to grab Baldwin Webb’s tablet from her desk, but he’d left his keys in her apartment. “Son of a bitch.”

Hollowness flared, but he couldn’t force himself to move. He could still smell her perfume on his clothes, could still feel her weight in his hands as he’d carried her into the bedroom. It wasn’t just the fact she’d put the investigation at risk. Over the past three days, Arden had sanded down the effect of grief and loss left behind by Rey’s death and the end of his marriage. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to being to the man he’d been before she’d manipulated her way into his life. Obsessed with finding answers, closed off, unable to sleep, relax, or unwind. As much as she’d contributed to the investigation and kept the case moving forward, Arden had done far more for him on a basic human level. She’d put him on a path to feeling whole, but now… Now he’d learned it’d all been a lie. She hadn’t done it for him. She’d used him to get what she needed for her own self gain.

“Damn it.” Lawson shouldered out of the SUV. Crisp morning air battled the nausea churning in his gut. He crossed the parking lot, hit the button for the elevators in the lobby, and rode the car to Arden’s floor. He had to detach. It’d be the only way to face her again. Stepping off the elevator, he headed down the hall and stopped in front of her door. He knocked.

No answer. No sounds of footsteps or movement from the other side of the peephole.

“Arden, it’s me. Open the door. I left my keys.” Hell, he should just call another agent from the Seattle office to pick him up. Still no answer. He pounded his fist against the door in case she hadn’t heard him the first time. Pieces of their conversation bled into focus. He’d lost his temper. He’d been trained to effectively handle stress under high-adrenaline situations, but every ounce of that training had vanished the moment she’d admitted she’d broken his trust. “Arden.”

Anxiety edged into him. Unholstering his sidearm, he leaned into the peephole to get a distorted view inside. He tested the handle, and the door swung open. Something wasn’t right. Pressing his back into the wall beside her door, Lawson craned his head around the corner. No sign of a break in or a struggle. Everything was exactly as he’d left it less than fifteen minutes ago. He maneuvered into the apartment and cleared the front room. “Arden?”

No answer.

Shit. Lawson heel-toed it across the front of the kitchen island where they’d spent breakfast together and rounded into the hallway toward her bedroom. Empty. The bathroom and closet, too. She wasn’t here. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Something was wrong. He’d coached her enough over the course of their marriage to look out for herself, to defend herself if necessary, and she wouldn’t have walked out of her apartment knowing a possible killer had motive to want her dead. Her laptop sat open with her phone beside it on the desk, her purse hung over the back of the chair. No. Arden wouldn’t have left her wallet and phone behind. Not willingly. He ran through the space a second time. There had to be something here—anything—that could tell him what’d happened in the time he’d left the apartment and him coming back for his keys. “Where the hell are you, woman?”

There. Holstering his weapon, he narrowed his attention on two small black dots, one stacked over the other, near the still open front door. His knees popped as he crouched to get a better look and traced his thumb over the blackened indents. He’d spent the past twenty-fours in this apartment, memorized every inch of it in addition to the woman he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of. These weren’t here before. The autopsy report from all three victims. No defensive wounds had been found on the bodies, as though they’d been unconscious before the killer had soaked them in gasoline and lit the match. The bone burns. It hadn’t come from a standard taser. “The killer modified it to render the victims unconscious.”

Arden.

Straightening, Lawson unpocketed his phone, dialing the sheriff from his list of recent calls. He hadn’t seen anyone coming in or out of the building when he’d left, which meant the killer had gotten access from somewhere else. The line picked up on the second ring, and he straightened. “Sanders, Arden Olsen has been taken from her apartment in the past ten minutes. Pull everyone you’ve got. I need Seattle PD and your department on scene to help with the search. Now.”

“Back up is on the way.” The sheriff ended the call before he had a chance to respond.

Desperation simmered under his skin. There was no proof Arden hadn’t simply walked out of her apartment on her own two feet, but his instincts screamed the same killer who’d murdered the victims in the case had caught up with her, too. He shouldn’t have left her unprotected. He should’ve waited for the agent he’d requested to take over his detail to arrive. If anything happened to her…

Swallowing around the thickness in his throat, Lawson retraced his path into the hallway, eyes cast to the floor. Arden had turned into everything he hated right in front of him, but he wasn’t going to leave her to fight a killer on her own. There had to be something—anything—that would tell him how the suspect had managed to get Arden out of the building without anyone noticing. Two lines of agitated carpet trailed in the opposite direction of the elevators, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He slowed, studying their path back to Arden’s door. Drag marks. He’d clocked his ex-wife around a hundred and twenty pounds. Light enough for an attacker to get out of the building without being seen? He followed the marks until they ended at the stairwell at the west end of the building where concrete interrupted carpet.

Hell. There was still a chance they were still here.

Unholstering his weapon, he shouldered through the door and leaned over the railing. The slam of metal against concrete echoed down the four floors of stairs, but there was no movement below. No movement above. The killer couldn’t have taken Arden far. “Damn it.”

He descended the stairs to the third floor, cleared the landing and glanced through the small, rectangular window revealing the hallway on the other side. Nothing. Tension infused the muscles down his spine as he cleared the second. The slam of a door from below hiked his pulse into overdrive, and Lawson took aim at the potential threat.

A young woman laughed as she pulled the man she was with in for a deep kiss and pressed him into the wall on the far side of the stairwell, neither of them older than twenty or twenty-one. The couple remained oblivious as he rounded onto the first floor and pulled his phone from his pocket. He faced the device toward them, Arden’s driver’s license photo filling the screen. “Have either of you seen this woman in the last few minutes?”

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